Knock

We hear the saying from the Bible, "Knock and it shall be opened."  A lot of us thought we knocked pretty hard and nothing happened.  God must be away or at least not on the other side of that door!  The frustration might be because we think of the "knocking" as the first thing that we do.  It is viewed as being at the starting gate of prayer.  We have done nothing yet.  We want to begin prayer.  But I think there is another meaning.  To Knock is to be at prayer already, beyond the starting gate.  We move from slowly jogging as in verbal prayer, to a bit faster pace, as in meditation, and this is when the knock comes.  We knock that God might open the door to contemplation, the full run of deep prayer.  Just as an exerciser cannot go from a standing start to a full run, we cannot go from nothing to contemplation.  Of course, if you are like me, there are some days in which I can barely move and some days when there will be no contemplation.  But if I don't try each day, I will not have the good days too.  At present, I am hoping that my prayer days are better than my running days.  Otherwise, I will be spiritually washed up!